Palliative Senior Care

What Is Palliative Care?

Palliative care focuses on the needs of the patient and provides relief for people experiencing pain, suffering, and side effects due to a chronic illness. Palliative care refers to treatment for the physical, emotional, and psychological symptoms that can come with a serious illness. Palliative care can also help patients cope with any medical treatment side effects.

The focus of palliative care is not on the prognosis, but rather optimizing everyday life for the patient. Palliative care seeks to minimize the symptoms of cancer, for example, including physical pain, nausea, and fatigue from chemotherapy, as well as the associated depression and anxiety. Palliative care can be offered at the same time as curative treatment. For palliative care, a specially trained team of health-care staff works together with the patient’s doctors to provide additional support. The staff may consist of a variety of medical specialists, nurses, social workers, and chaplains.

Who Needs Palliative Care?

Palliative care is an option for older adults at any stage suffering from a life-threatening illness, such as kidney failure, cancer, heart failure, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease. Anyone suffering from a chronic illness should get palliative care, especially at the time of diagnosis or early treatment.

Palliative care is specialized medical care that can help get patients and their families the support they need. It can help reduce the stress and challenges that often come with chronic disease. Palliative care can manage disease and reduce patient suffering. It focuses more on improving and extending quality of life for people living with a disease.

Palliative Care vs. Hospice

Palliative care is often confused with hospice care. There are some similarities, but they are different. Hospice patients typically have a terminal illness for which a cure is no longer possible, or they have chosen to forgo curative treatment or their current treatment is not helping. Hospice patients typically have a prognosis of six months or fewer. Palliative care is a part of hospice treatment, and it’s appropriate at any point during a serious illness. Both palliative and hospice care place an emphasis on pain and symptom relief, but hospice care focuses on compassionate comfort care and typically excludes curative treatment. We’ll compare the two types of care below.

Benefits of Palliative Care

In addition to the advancements in the treatment of chronic illness, palliative care can help patients live longer lives, help reduce physical and mental suffering and pain, and greatly lessen stress among the patient and family caregivers. Here are some other benefits of palliative care:

• It improves quality of life despite diagnosis.
• It strengthens communication and coordination of care between the patient and health-care providers.
• It advocates for the patient and family regarding goals of care and symptom management.
• It facilitates and supports decision-making in tune with the patient’s wishes.
• It relieves pain and discomfort from symptoms such as nausea and shortness of breath.
• It meets the social and emotional needs of the patient.
• It provides for the spiritual needs of the patient.

Do You Need Palliative Care?

Palliative care can be an option at the time of diagnosis or early treatment. Families who are at a loss for how to provide care and optimal quality of life for their loved ones dealing with a chronic illness should consider palliative care.

Reasons to consider palliative care include:

• The patient is suffering physical pain from a serious illness or side effects from the treatment of that illness.
• The patient is experiencing emotional or psychological pain due to an illness.
• The patient and family require assistance coordinating care per the patient’s wishes.
• The patient seeks better pain and symptom management for a higher quality of life.
• The patient seeks an additional support system by a team of health-care professionals, specialists, chaplains.

How Do I Get Palliative Care?

To receive palliative care, your doctor will typically need to refer you. Patients should discuss their plans with loved ones. When requesting palliative care, patients can discuss their reasons for seeking palliative care, such as seeking better pain management, spiritual support, or quality of life. Palliative care is generally offered in hospitals, specialized clinics, and nursing homes. You can use our senior housing directory to find nursing homes and other care centers in your area.

What Kind of Illnesses Receive Palliative Care?

Patients with progressive, incurable diseases receive palliative care. That includes:

• Cancer
• Strokes
• Cardiac disease
• Respiratory disease
• Chronic liver disease
• Parkinson’s disease
• Kidney failure
• Dementia
• Alzheimer’s disease
• HIV/AIDS
• Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
• Multiple sclerosis

Most adults in palliative care have chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases (38.5 percent), cancer (34 percent), chronic respiratory diseases (10.3 percent), AIDS (5.7 percent), or diabetes (4.6 percent), according to the World Health Organization.1 The two most common symptoms experienced by patients who require palliative care are pain and difficulty breathing.

When Do I Receive Palliative Care?

Palliative care can begin at any time after diagnosis or at the beginning of treatment. The goal is to provide pain and symptom management, as well as support a better quality of life and longer life on the patient’s terms.

Where Do I Receive Palliative Care?

Palliative care is provided in hospitals, outpatient clinics, and long-term care facilities such as nursing homes and specialized clinics. It can also be provided at home. It is generally provided where the patient is being treated.

What Physical Symptoms Does Palliative Care Relieve?

Patients suffering from a chronic illness generally suffer from a variety of ailments related to the disease, and from side effects of curative treatments. Palliative care can help manage and lessen symptoms and side effects such as pain, fatigue, shortness of breath, constipation, nausea, loss of appetite, and sleep problems.

Does Insurance Pay for Palliative Care?

Private insurance companies mostly cover palliative care, as do Medicare and Medicaid, but it depends on your insurance. Patients and families should understand exactly what their insurance carrier covers and if there are any limits or out-of-pocket costs, such as for treatments and medicines. Different insurance plans have different coverage for palliative care.

The Palliative Care Team

Having a palliative care team can provide more support for someone suffering from chronic illness. For caregivers, the extra support can bring relief of stress and worry, knowing their loved one is in the capable hands of a palliative care team. Typically, a palliative care team is made up of a range of trained professionals such as doctors, nurses, and psychiatrists, along with allied health professionals such as counselors, dieticians, pharmacists, social workers, and rehabilitation specialists.

The palliative care team may also include religious or spiritual leaders such as chaplains. The goal of the palliative care team is to improve a patient’s quality of life and coordinate care. A spiritual or religious leader may offer spiritual guidance and exploration of beliefs and values, for example, while a doctor may prescribe medications or other therapies to ease constipation or nausea. Other members of a palliative team may provide relaxation exercises or nutrition guidance.

Questions for Your Palliative Care Team

Patients and family should be prepared with questions to ask their palliative team to ensure the best care is received and meets your expectations. Here are some questions to ask:

Summary

Nearly 57 million people need palliative care each year, including 25.7 million people in their last year of life, according to the World Health Organization.1 Twelve million people in the U.S. are living with chronic illness, and the numbers are predicted to increase over the next two decades, per the Center to Advance Palliative Palliative care can be a good option at any stage of illness for adults suffering from a life-threatening illness.

Earlier palliative treatment can reduce unnecessary hospitalizations and promote longer life and better health outcomes. Palliative care can control physical pain, symptoms, and emotional trauma and stress. If you’re undergoing treatment for a serious illness, you may want to ask your doctor for a referral for palliative care.